ical, social, and religious liberty, shall be the common property of all the people, whatever tongue it may speak, or in whatever church pray; and that a national ministry shall execute these laws, and guard with its responsibility the chartered, ancient independence of our Fatherland.

Two days before, Austria's brave people in Vienna had broken its yoke; and summing up despots in the person of their tool, old Metternich, drove him away; and the Hapsburgs, trembling in their imperial cavern of imperial crimes, trembling, but treacherous, and lying and false, wrote with yard-long letters, the words, "Constitution and "Free Press," upon Vienna's walls; and the people in joy cheered the inveterate liars, because the people knows no falsehood.

On the 14th, I announced the tidings from Vienna to our Parliament at Presburg. The announcement was swiftly carried by the great democrat, the steam-engine, upon the billows of the Danube, down to old Buda and to young Pesth, and while we, in the House of Representatives, passed the laws of justice and freedom, the people of Pesth rose in peaceful but majestic manifestation, declaring that the people should be free. At this manifestation all the barriers raised by violence against the laws, fell of themselves. Not a drop of blood was shed. A man who was in prison because he had dared to write a book, was carried home in triumph through the streets. The people armed itself as a National Guard, the windows were illuminated and bonfires burnt, and when these tidings returned back to Presburg, blended with the cheers from Vienna, they warmed the chill of our House of Lords, who readily agreed to the laws we proposed. And there was rejoicing throughout the land. For the first time for centuries the farmer awoke with the pleasant feeling that his time was now his own for the first time went out to till his field with the consoling thought that the ninth part of his harvest will not be taken by the landlord, nor the tenth by the bishop. Both had fully resigned their feudal portion, and the air was brightened by the lustre of freedom, and the very soil budding into a blooming paradise. Such is the memory of the 15th of March, 1848.

L. Kossuth.

LXXXI.

THE SAME CONTINUED.

ONE year later, there was blood, but also victory, over the

land; the people because free, fought like demi-gods. Seven great victories we had gained in that month of March. On this very day, the remains of the first ten thousand Russians fled over the frontiers of Transylvania, to tell at home how heavily the blow falls from free Hungarian arms. It was in that very month, that one evening I lay down in the bed, whence in the morning Windischgrätz had risen; and from the battle-field I hastened to the Congress at Debreczin, to tell the Representatives of the nation "It is time to declare our national independence, because it is really achieved. The Hapsburgs have not power to contradict it more." Nor had they.

But Russia, having experienced by the test of its first interference, that there was no power on earth caring about the most flagrant violation of the laws of nations, and seeing by the silence of Great Britain and of the United States, that she may dare to violate those laws, our heroes had to meet a fresh force of nearly two hundred thousand Russians. No power cheered our bravelywon independence by diplomatic recognition; not even the United States, though they always professed their principle to be that they recognize every de facto government. We therefore had the right to expect a speedy recognition from the United States. Our struggle rose to European height, but we were left alone to fight for the world; and we had no arms for the new battalions, gathering up in thousands with resolute hearts and empty hands.

The recognition of our independence being withheld, commercial intercourse for procuring arms abroad was impossible, the gloomy feeling of entire forsakedness spread over our tired ranks, and prepared the field for the secret action of treachery; until the most sacrilegious violation of those common laws of nations was achieved, and the code of "nature and of nature's God" was drowned in Hungary's blood. And I, who on the 15th of March, 1848, saw the principle of full civil and religious liberty triumphing in my native land, who, on the 15th of

March, 1849, saw this freedom consolidated by victories, one year later, on the 15th of March, 1850, was on my sorrowful way to an Asiatic prison.

L. Kossuth.

BUT

LXXXII.

THE SAME CONCLUDED.

UT wonderful are the ways of Divine Providence. It was again in the month of March, 1851, that the generous interposition of the United States cast the first ray of hope into the dead night of my captivity. And on the 15th of March, 1852, the fourth anniversary of our Revolution, guided by the bounty of Providence, here I stand, in the very heart of your immense Republic; no longer a captive, but free in the land of the free, not only not desponding, but firm in confidence of the future, because raised in spirits by a swelling sympathy in the home of the brave; still a poor, a homeless exile, but not without some power to do good to my country and to the cause of liberty, as my very persecution proves. Such is the history of the 15th of March, in my humble life. Who can tell what will be the character of the next 15th of March?

Nearly two thousand years ago, the first Cæsar found a Brutus on the Ides or 15th of March. May be that the Ides of March, 1853, will see the last of the Cæsars fall under the avenging might of a thousand-handed Brutus the name of whom is "the people - inexorable at last after it has been so long generous. The seat of the Cæsars was first in the south, then from the south to the east, from the east to the west, and from the west to the north. That is their last abode. None was lasting yet. Will the last, and worst, prove luckier? No, it will not. While the seat of the Cæsars was tossed around and thrown back to the icy north, a new world became the cradle of a new humanity, where, in spite of the Cæsars, the Genius of Freedom raised (let us hope) an everlasting throne. The Cæsar of the north and the Genius of Freedom have not place enough upon this earth for both of them; one must yield and be crushed beneath the heels of the other. Which is it? Which shall yield? America may decide L. Kossuth.

LXXXIII.

THE MAYFLOWER AND THE PILGRIMS.

METHINKS I see it now, that one solitary, adventurous

vessel, the Mayflower of a forlorn hope, freighted with the prospects of a future state, and bound across the unknown sea. I behold it pursuing, with a thousand misgivings, the uncertain, the tedious voyage. Suns rise and set, and weeks, and months pass, and winter surprises them on the deep, but brings them not the sight of the wished-for shore. I see them now, scantily supplied with provisions, crowded almost to suffocation in their ill-stored prison, delayed by calms, pursuing a circuitous route; and now, driven in fury before the raging tempest, in their scarcely seaworthy vessel. The awful voice of the storm howls through the rigging. The laboring masts seem straining from their base; the dismal sound of the pumps is heard; the ship leaps, as it were, madly from billow to billow; the ocean breaks, and settles with ingulfing floods over the floating deck, and beats with deadening weight, against the staggered vessel. I see them, escaped from these perils, pursuing their all but desperate undertaking, and landed at last, after a five months' passage, on the ice-clad rocks of Plymouth, weak and weary from the voyage, poorly armed, scantily provisioned, depending on the charity of their shipmaster for a draught of beer on board, drinking nothing but water on shore, without shelter, without means, surrounded by hostile tribes.

Shut now the volume of history, and tell me, on any principle of human probability, what shall be the fate of this handful of adventurers. Tell me, man of military science, in how many months were they all swept off by the thirty savage tribes, enumerated within the early limits of New England? Tell me, politician, how long did this shadow of a colony, on which your conventions and treaties had not smiled, languish on the distant coast? Student of history, compare for me the baffled projects, the deserted settlements, the abandoned adventures of other times, and find the parallel of this. Was it the winter's storm, beating upon the houseless heads of women and children? was it hard labor and spare meals? was it disease? was it the tomahawk? was it the deep malady of blighted hope, a

ruined enterprise, and a broken heart, aching in its last moments at the recollection of the loved and left, beyond the sea? -was it some, or all of these united, that hurried this forsaken company to their melancholy fate? And is it possible that neither of these causes, that not all combined, were able to blast this bud of hope? Is it possible, that from a beginning so feeble, so frail, so worthy, not so much of admiration as of pity, there has gone forth a progress so steady, a growth so wonderful, a reality so important, a promise yet to be fulfilled so glorious?

E. Everett.

LXXXIV.

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA.

AFTER years of fruitless and heart-sick solicitation, after

offering, in effect, to this monarch and to that monarch, the gift of a hemisphere, the great discoverer touches upon a partial success. He succeeds, not in enlisting the sympathy of his countrymen at Genoa and Venice, for a brave brother-sailor,-not in giving a new direction to the spirit of maritime adventure, which had so long prevailed in Portugal, not in stimulating the commercial thrift of Henry the Seventh, or the pious ambition of the Catholic king. His sorrowful perseverance touched the heart of a noble princess, worthy the throne which she adorned. The New World, which was just escaping the subtle kingcraft of Ferdinand, was saved to Spain by the womanly compassion of Isabella.

It is truly melancholy, however, to contemplate the wretched equipment, for which the most powerful princess of Christendom was ready to pledge her jewels. Floating castles will soon be fitted out to convey the miserable natives of Africa to the golden shores of America; towering galleons will be despatched to bring home the guilty treasures to Spain. But three small vessels, one of which was without a deck, and neither of them, probably, exceeding the capacity of a pilot-boat, and even these impressed into the public service, composed the expedition fitted out under royal patronage, to realize that magnificent conception, in which the creative mind of Columbus had planted the germs of a new world.